One Tragic Night (68 page)

‘No, it cannot be. Mr Roux would not do that,' said Nel, frustrated at the explanation. Again, Oscar was sacrificing the reputation of his defence counsel in order to save himself. ‘Mr Roux would not have said to you, that it is in order for you to keep your father's ammunition in your safe. He would not have done that. I put it to you,' said Nel.

For Nel, this was another example of the accused not willing to take responsibility – why else would he not plead guilty to such a blatantly obvious transgression of the law? But Oscar continued to claim that while it was in his safe, he was technically not in possession of the ammunition.

Nel questioned the accused on why he kept a spare magazine in his bedside drawer, and – once again – his understanding of the law. After first admitting that he left the magazine in his bedside drawer at all times, Oscar said that he in fact put it in the safe whenever he left the house. ‘At times I carry that extra magazine with me. At times I put it in my bedside table. If I went away, I locked it in my safe,' he said. But then less than a minute later he added: ‘I am sure there was a couple of occasions that I forgot to lock it away, M'Lady. I cannot say and I cannot stand here and lie. There would have been occasions, but this is not related to the charge of the .38 ammunition in the safe.'

But it was indeed relevant for Nel as he attempted to show the court that the accused was a negligent firearm owner.

Besides Oscar's evidence disputing the testimony of his former friends and girlfriend related to the firearm charges, the defence team led no further evidence related to these charges. This came as a surprise to many.

Ballistics expert Wollie Wolmarans – Mangena's equivalent on the defence team – did not challenge the police witness's testimony about the Glock's safety mechanism; neither did he suggest possibilities and case studies showing how this particular firearm could go off without the trigger being pulled. He also did not testify about the laws related to ammunition being stored in order to confirm his client's understanding of the legislation.

On the two shooting incidents, all the court had to go on from the defence's side was Oscar's version. Nothing more. Either the defence thought that Oscar's version was sufficient to stand up to scrutiny or they had accepted a guilty ruling on these additional charges. The risks were high.

Captain Francois Moller's job as a cellphone analyst for the South African Police Service (SAPS) is to look backwards and connect the dots, primarily those that have left an elaborate trail on Steve Jobs's creations. Moller is stationed at the Technological Investigation Support Centre at the head office of Detective Services under commanding officer Colonel Mike Sales.

Moller's friendliness and jolly demeanour are underlined by his genuine smile. His apparent lack of jadedness and cynicism, which so often characterise career policemen, belies his credentials and experience as a cop. He spent five years in the early 2000s at the murder and robbery unit in Pretoria until it was shut down by then Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi. Moller then spent several months at the provincial head office assisting detectives with high-profile cases such as the kidnapping and murder of Sheldean Human before getting a promotion to the high-tech unit under now-retired Major-General Sharon Schutte. He was then moved to the specialist police unit, the Hawks, officially referred to as the DPCI (Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation).

Moller has regularly testified in high-profile court matters for which he analyses phone records to assist with the prosecution. Some of these cases include the Chanelle Henning murder, the Griekwastad family killings and the shooting of boxer Corrie Sanders.

In the trial of two men accused (and later convicted) of murdering young mother Chanelle Henning, Moller was responsible for a first in South African courts: he used Geotag data retrieved from the photos of one of the accused's BlackBerry handsets to analyse his movements during the planning stages of the murder. Moller plotted this movement on Google Maps and during his testimony in court would switch to Street View to show the judge key locations in
respect of crime scene photos. The judge acknowledged the policeman's good work in his ruling.

Moller and Mike Sales were responsible for analysing the cellphones, iPads and computers belonging to Oscar and Reeva that were on the scene of the shooting. All in all, these included three iPhones, two BlackBerries, two iPads and one MacBook computer. The devices and their contents featured prominently in the investigation and court case and have to a large degree been shrouded in intrigue. They fuelled public speculation as to a motive for a potential murder and many believed in the run-up to the trial that the answer to the question of what might have led to a possible argument in the dead of night lay in the data and text on the cellphones.

Did Reeva receive a text message from an ex-boyfriend that sent Oscar into a blind rage? Or perhaps Oscar was surfing porn and Reeva stumbled upon this, sparking a fierce fight?

But it was not only the devices and their contents that were the focus of attention and the subject of scrutiny. Rather, it was the attempts, which were fraught with difficulties and became increasingly desperate, by Moller and Sales to gain access to these handsets that were particularly intriguing. Their endeavours even led them to Apple's headquarters in California in a mad scramble as the trial was already underway.

On the morning of Valentine's Day 2013, police officers at Oscar's home, led by investigating officer Hilton Botha, seized several devices in the house bar one iPhone 5. Reeva's black, scratched iPhone 4S with a metallic cover and dried blood specks on the front and back was found on the tiles in the bathroom, partially obscured by the charcoal bathmat, near a pool of blood and just centimetres from Oscar's silver 9 mm firearm. The athlete's white iPhone 5 was also discovered in the bathroom on the bloody tiles face up next to a smear of red. Two BlackBerries, which had not been used for several months, were stacked in the bedroom near the amplifier while his and her iPads were found on the carpet next to the bed, closest to the sliding door leading on to the balcony.

Botha handed the phones to Moller who had the responsibility of analysing the contents. All he had was the PIN code for Reeva's phone and he did not know the PIN for Oscar's phone, nor the numbers for either line. Early on the morning of the shooting Reeva's friend Samantha Greyvenstein had given Botha the PIN code for the phone in order for him to find a number for her next of kin.

Samantha keyed in the PIN code and Botha called Reeva's mother. But he neglected to write down the PIN and so later that afternoon, when Kim Myers and her father and brother arrived at the house, he asked them for the code.
Once Kim had phoned Samantha to get the password, Botha took the phone from the bag of evidence and allowed Kim to charge it in her brother's car. Together with the investigating officer, Kim and her brother checked Reeva's last messages before Botha took the phone back into evidence. He later gave the code to Moller so that he could access the device.

When Moller analysed the two phones originally sent to him, he was unaware that Oscar owned two phones – one a ‘work' phone (with a number ending in 4949), the other for ‘personal' calls (ending in 0020). The device Moller had in his possession was the athlete's work phone, while the other was unaccounted for.

Under Section 205 of the Criminal Procedure Act, the police may approach a court for an order giving them access to certain information, including a phone company's call records. The phone company has to hand these records over once the court issues this order. It was once Moller had this data that he discovered that Oscar had a second phone because his particulars were linked to two numbers. Oscar had replaced the two BlackBerries when he had done a SIM swap the previous year, so the data received by Moller was for Reeva's phone and Oscar's work and personal handsets. The data also ruled out any need to investigate the BlackBerries seized at the scene as evidence because they were no longer in use.

According to the data retrieved from the phone in the police's possession – the number ending with 4949 – no calls had been made by the athlete in the wake of the shooting. This was why when Hilton Botha took the stand during the bail application, he confidently told the magistrate that Oscar's phone showed no record of any calls being made on the morning of 14 February. It appeared that the athlete had not phoned the police or the paramedics. And yet Oscar's lawyers were adamant that the calls had indeed been made.

But where was the other handset with the second number? This was an issue Nel would have to raise in the bail application. ‘We know that you seized two phones in the house?' asked Nel, leading Botha through his evidence in the bail application:

Then Nel made the revelation in court – a phone was missing from the scene and the defence had not handed it over to investigators. The defence responded by
insisting that they were never asked for the phone. An arrangement was made for it to be given to the investigating team.

This handset was crucial to the investigation – the 0020 number was Oscar's personal number and the device he used most. The majority of his communication with Reeva and with his friends was done via this iPhone and if there were any clues as to what had occurred in the early hours of Valentine's Day, this phone would hold them.

The phone was collected from the defence a full 12 days after Reeva was shot – but little did investigators know they would face months of frustration and difficulty in trying to gain access to the contents of 0020.

Reports emerged in June 2013 that police had still not managed to analyse Oscar's phone, apparently because he had forgotten the password. His lawyer's, however, dismissed the reports, stating that they had provided the police with all the required information to access the phone.

Then in the second week of February 2014, just weeks before the trial was to start, we established that the police had still not managed to gain access. It was revealed at the time that red tape had hindered an application for international mutual legal assistance – Moller and his team were trying to get the phone to Apple in California where its manufacturers could analyse it, but had to go through the US authorities based at their embassy in Pretoria. The SAPS had been told to approach Apple directly in order to resolve the problem of access to the phone's data.

But this is where the process had hit a horrible wobble. The official application lay on someone's desk, somewhere between the National Prosecuting Authority and the SAPS, for several months. From May 2013 until December that year, the process stalled. It was only towards the end of the year, with the trial just months away, that top police management realised there was a problem and reignited the search for answers.

Why hadn't they been able to access the phone? Sources claim that the password Oscar had provided did not unlock the device, and the software Moller and his team were using was unable to bypass it.

In January 2014, the cops scrambled to get the paperwork in order and went knocking on the door of Pretoria Chief Magistrate Desmond Nair. The required affidavits were secured and a certificate was finally issued by the National Director of Public Prosecutions. Local representatives of American security institutions were also contacted. The way was finally paved for the trip to Apple in America.

All of this took time, and lots of it. The investigators were running out of this
precious commodity with the trial now mere days away. They could not afford to be the reason that the matter be postponed, or even worse, struck off the roll due to lack of preparation.

By this stage the National Commissioner and the Minister of Police Nathi Mthethwa were apparently raging at the lack of answers and were angry that the process had not been done more efficiently.

While this was playing out in February 2014, local television network eNCA reported that it had gained exclusive access to Oscar's iTunes account using the username and password he had provided to the police. But it wasn't the iTunes account the police needed – it was much more complex than that. The password the police needed was one that was created when the phone was synced with a computer. It appeared that this particular password had been changed after the shooting when it was last synchronised with a computer. ‘If you set up your iPhone, you have to create an iTunes account. Now on that account, if you log onto your computer, it will ask you in the set-up on your computer where you can decide to encrypt the data on your phone, whether you want to password protect it. That's the password that gave the problem,' explains a member of the state's team.